


Life is Not a Love Song

by indevan



Series: Rock Band AU [42]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/M, Las Vegas Wedding, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 09:36:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15410061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Bulma realizes that this is probably the worst thing she could have done since all she’s accomplished is drawing attention to herself and the computer.  She has to use that big brain of hers to come up with some kind of explanation why she leapt in front of her laptop as though she were protecting it from an assassin





	Life is Not a Love Song

**Author's Note:**

> [AU Timeline](http://vertigoats.tumblr.com/post/166537761367/since-after-the-first-few-the-fics-in-rock-band)  
> [AU tag](http://vertigoats.tumblr.com/tagged/rock-band-au)  
> .  
>  so we've come up on the one year anniversary of this au and i'm still so surprised and blown away by the response. thank you everyone who's read and commented on this series, everyone who's sent me asks about it or the fact that i've actually?? received fanart ?? for it ?? it's incredible and i'm so glad for it all

Bulma closes the top of her laptop when she hears the beep of the keycard in the door.  It opens to reveal her boyfriend eating strips of cured meat off of a wooden board.

“The restaurant downstairs has a charcuterie board on the menu,” Vegeta says, mouth full. “Which is a fancy way to say _antipasto,_ I guess, but with bougie bullshit on it.”

She snorts a laugh and places her palms down on her laptop as if that would keep what she had been searching private.

“They let you take the board?”

“No.  So I told them where they could shove their board.” He pauses to swallow and gives a slight smirk before saying, “In an unrelated story, I’m no longer welcome at the restaurant downstairs.”

“Seriously?”

“I was until they found out who I was.  Then I had to fucking sign the wall by fucking Mr. Satan.  That wrestler?” Vegeta rolls his eyes. “Anyway, the board is mine.”

Bulma rises from her seat and quirks a brow.

“Why did you want it?”

He arches his brows and drums his fingers on it.  She laughs, knowing he has to say no more. They had forgotten to take along some of their toys with them on this trip to Vegas--a couples thing with the two of them, Chi-Chi, and Kakarrot.  Granted, she hasn’t seen the other couple since they arrived at the hotel that morning. Not that she can blame them. Prior to the trip, not only were the boys on tour, but Sadistic Dance was _also_ on tour, which meant that Chi-Chi not only had her own kids but her nephew at the house as well.  Bulma can’t imagine how hard it is to have FaceTime sex with a twelve-year-old, seven-year-old, _and_ three-year-old running around.  Bulma was lucky that she could have Bulla and Trunks stay with Caulifla and Kale when she wanted to get cybertronically nasty.

He holds the board out towards her.

“I love how this place is trying to make prosciutto sound fancy when my mom used to feed me it in my highchair.”

Bulma takes a thinly sliced piece of meat from the board and shakes her head with another laugh.

“That is the most Italian thing I’ve ever heard you say and that includes you actually speaking the language to our kids.”

He makes a grunting noise and walks past her.  She watches him place the board down on the desk in their room, close to her laptop.  His hand moves towards it and Bulma moves quickly. She throws herself in front of him, all but sprawling across the top of her computer.  Vegeta cocks a brow.

“The fuck?”

Bulma realizes that this is probably the worst thing she could have done since all she’s accomplished is drawing attention to herself and the computer.  She has to use that big brain of hers to come up with some kind of explanation why she leapt in front of her laptop as though she were protecting it from an assassin.

“I was looking at porn,” she says quickly and then curses herself.

“I was gone for, like, a half hour.”

“I was really horny.”

He looks unconvinced.  Bulma tucks some of her hair behind her ears and sighs.

“Okay, uh.  I’m buying your birthday present?”

“It’s July.  My birthday’s not until the end of October.”

“Well--hey!”

Her next excuse dies in her throat as Vegeta lifts her up and sets her aside.  He opens the lid of the laptop and Bulma closes her eyes as she sees the browser window pop up.  Why hadn’t she just closed out of it?

“Why are you looking at wedding dresses?”

Why indeed?  They’ve always agreed that they liked their situation as is and, other than a conversation at Kakarrot and Chi-Chi’s wedding, never brought it up again.  But lately she’s felt...off. At Bulla’s third birthday party, she first felt it. Watching Vegeta--her rude and gruff punk rocker of a boyfriend--with their kids made her want to make it official.  It’s dumb, she knows. They don’t need paperwork to legitimize themselves or their children, but the thought is there.

“Who’s getting married?”

“What?” she asks before she can stop herself.

Oh--he thinks she’s looking on behalf of someone else.  Well, that makes sense. At least three of their friends had come to her for help in planning nuptials.  Maybe that’s another thing making her think about the two of them.

“Are Mai and Launch getting married?  Dinna didn’t say anything when she was over before we left and you know that kid doesn’t shut up.”

Bulma sighs.  She loves him but sometimes he’s the worst.

“Hon, she’s five.  Also, if memory serves, our own kids never stop talking either.”

Vegeta shrugs.

“Yeah, but they’re our kids so they’re better.”

Okay, she can’t actually argue with that.  She can dodge around it, but she’s just as bad about this as he is.

“So are they?”

She could lie, easily, but then that would lead to more problems down the line.  May as well fess up now. Bulma watches him messing with a stray thread at the cuff of his jacket and draws a breath in.

“No,” she says. “I was looking at them for me.”

Vegeta jerks his head up.

“For you?”

She chews her lip and shrugs as if it’s nothing--which it is.  Just her dumb fancy.

“Yeah, it’s no big deal,” she says. “I was bored.”

He doesn’t look convinced.

“Then why did you not want me to see it?”

He’s just asking all the right questions, isn’t he?  Bulma sighs and looks away because she doesn’t have an answer yet.  Not really. How can she answer him when she doesn’t know why she’s thinking about it to begin with?

“I don’t know,” she says finally. “I mean, we’ve talked about it--us...marriage, whatever.  I didn’t want you to think that I was, like, lying to your face when I agreed. Because I do agree--I mean, I’m happy with our life, but.  I don’t fucking know.”

Bulma punctuates her half-baked sentence by flinging her arms out.  Vegeta catches her hand and brings her close. She looks at him, at the features she’s known so intimately for years, and wonders what he’s going to say.

“What?” she asks because of course she’s going to be the one to break the silence.

“Do you?” he asks.

“Do I what?”

Vegeta exhales in frustration and she can smell the meat on his breath from whatever he ate off of the charcuterie.

“Do you want to get married?”

Bulma lets out a breathy laugh.

“What?  Now?”

He pulls a face for a moment as if the notion is absurd--which makes sense, considering the page of incredibly expensive wedding dresses she had been browsing is still up on her laptop--but then it changes.

“Sure, why not?”

There’s plenty of reasons, really.  Technically speaking, they’re celebrities and Bulma doesn’t really want to miss out on an opportunity to get everyone talking about her, which an extravagant wedding is sure to do.  It’s clichéd, too, considering where they are. But, on the other hand, it’s perfect for them. They’ve never been normal or done things the way they’re supposed to. A dumb, impromptu Vegas wedding might be it.

But is he serious?  Is she?

“Really?” she balks.

Vegeta’s eyes flash as he repeats, “Why not?”

Her mind goes back to Kakarrot and Chi-Chi’s wedding and how he said if she wanted to get married, they could get married and she had joked that it was the worst proposal she had ever heard.

“You meant it then, didn’t you?”

His brow furrows in confusion.

“What?  When?”

Bulma glances at her laptop screen as it darkens to the screensaver and back at him.

“At Chi-Chi’s wedding.  You really meant it when you said we could get married.”

“I rarely say shit I don’t mean.  Waste of words.”

_That’s the truth…_

Her apprehension and worry, though, has begun to segue into a kind of giddiness.  They’re really doing this, aren’t they? Bulma grabs him by the arms and leans in to kiss him.

“Okay,” she says once they separate. “We’re doing this.  I’m glad I packed that white vinyl dress.”

Vegeta makes a scoffing noise. “We have two kids.”

“Shut up.  It’s my wedding.  I’m wearing white.”

She whirls away and goes to the closet in the hotel room where she hung up a few of her nicer outfits for their trip.  The dress is short and strapless and a bit too revealing for an actual wedding, but she doesn’t care.

“I need something old, new, borrowed, and blue,” she says, mostly to herself as she takes the dress off of the hanger clips.

“My jacket is three of those things,” Vegeta says, voice closer than she remembered, meaning that he’s right behind her.

Bulma turns around and jabs a finger into his chest.

“First of all, that jacket can barely qualify as ‘blue’ anymore.  Second of all, I’m not wearing it. You shouldn’t even be wearing it.  It’s held together with safety pins and hope.”

He scowls a bit, but she knows that he can’t argue about the condition of his precious denim jacket.  Although, truthfully, him wearing that to get married is the most Vegeta thing he could do.

She changes as quickly as she can out of her shorts and t-shirt into it.  While she does, she catches her boyfriend (fiancé? Can she use that word when they got engaged and married in the same day?) rooting around in his suitcase.

“Good, I didn’t unpack it.”

Bulma turns around, mid-wiggle into her dress, and tips her head to the side.

“Unpack what?”

Vegeta holds up an old-looking barrette depicting a lily.

“What’s that?”

“My mom’s,” he says, voice only slightly strained. “She used to wear this for good luck onstage so I take it with me on tour.”

Bulma nearly frowns.  She hadn’t seen that before.

“Since when?”

“Since I saw it at my dad’s place.  I thought he threw it out after she died.”

The subject of his mother and her death is still sore after all these years (granted, Bulma imagines that it’s very hard to get over walking in on your mother’s body), but she feels a warmth spread in her chest as she looks at the barette.  She gets the rest of the way into her dress and gingerly takes it from him. Turning towards the mirror attached to the dresser, she carefully pins it in her hair, suddenly glad that she had been letting it grow out from the pixie cut she had been sporting since Bulla was born.

“It’s old and borrowed,” he says gruffly.

Bulma nods and gently touches the flower.

“I guess I’m my own ‘something blue,’” she says, looking at her hair.

“Our rings can be the new,” he finishes. “So let’s get this shit going.”

“You going like that?”

He shrugs as if the thought of looking nicer never occurred to him.  Truthfully, Bulma wouldn’t have it any other way. She’s going to look completely fuckable (in her own, humble opinion) in a dress she had bought specifically to be fucked in and he’s going to look like his proper punk rock self with that disgusting jacket, ripped jeans, and a Cabaret Voltaire shirt.

“We need our witnesses,” she says. “Go to the other suite and tell Chi-Chi and Kakarrot to stop having sex for, like, an hour while I do my makeup.”

He pulls a face.

“I don’t want to think about him fucking.”

Bulma puts her hands on her hips and lets out a sharp laugh.

“Oh, _please._  I know you two did _something_ together at some point.  You’re both always being vague but entirely obvious at the same time.  So do not start with me and go get our friends.”

He surprises her by pulling her close to kiss her.

“Fine.”

Bulma splays her hands against his chest and exhales through her nose.

“Okay.  Now go.”

\--

“Y’know,” Kakarrot says, “I thought you woulda gone with the Mick Jagger impersonator, but I guess Elvis is the classic.”

The little chapel looks exactly like she thought it would.  It’s kitschy and tacky with two benches that are probably meant to be pews where their two friends are currently seated.  Chi-Chi has put in an effort to dress up a little in a casual, off-the-shoulder velvet dress, but Kakarrot is wearing the same vintage horror shirt and distressed jeans he had hastily put on when Vegeta banged on their door an hour ago.

“Shh,” Chi-Chi tells him, putting a finger over her lips.

“What?  It’s not a real church.”

She sighs. “Kakarrot, please.”

Bulma directs her gaze to one of the “stained glass” windows, that are just panes of glass painted with acrylic paint that don’t look out onto anything and back at their officiant who is, in fact, an Elvis impersonator.  He intones basic vows in a terrible impression of the King that she isn’t truthfully listening to. She’s too busy watching Vegeta across from her.

“You don’t have your own vows, do you?” the officiant asks, breaking character.

Did they?  Truthfully, Bulma can’t think of anything either of them could say that was wedding appropriate (venue aside) and didn’t include at least a few uses of “fuck.”

“Uh--”

“We don’t normally allow them,” he continues, “since a lot of our happy couples have had a few drinks and tend to ramble.  But--uh, well, you’re the lead singer of Apetail. So I can bend the rules.”

Vegeta scrunches his face up for a moment and Bulma catches herself before she bursts out laughing.  Shit, she loves this man.

“Okay,” she says. “I have some vows.”

“You do?” he asks.

Bulma nods. “Yeah.  I do.”

“Go ahead, baby,” the officiant says, now back in his role.

She fights the urge to roll her eyes and focuses back on Vegeta.

“So,” she begins, “I didn’t know when I took you home and you told me about your nipple shot glasses that we’d end up here.  I thought you were cute and I guess I had a thing for dating musicians even if I wasn’t aware of it...but. Shit. I love you?

“Like, you’re grouchy and rude and a pain in the ass to everyone around you but you’re all of that to _me._  You’re my grouchy, rude, pain in the ass.  I love the life we’ve made and how I can gloat to the press that I fucked you before and after you were famous.”

She sees Chi-Chi put her hand over her face at the same time that she hears Kakarrot let out a laugh.  Bulma realizes that she’s rambling and figures that she ought to wrap it up.

“Just.  I’m glad we spontaneously decided to do this, because I was already set to spend the rest of my life with you and now we can brag about having the paperwork to back it up.  So--” She knows this part will piss him off, but to her, there’s no more perfect finisher. “I love you, Vegeta Hamlet Prince.”

True to her prediction, he cringes.

“His middle name is Hamlet?” Chi-Chi wonders aloud.

Kakarrot, again, cracks up.  She waits for him to respond, wondering what he’d even come up with.

“I once told you that I’d give this shit up in a heartbeat for you and Trunks.  Well, add Bulla to that and I still fucking mean it, got it?”

“That’s it?” the officiant asks and then, recovering, adds an awkward Elvis laugh to the end of it.

“Yep.”

He exhales and nods. “Okay, okay.  Rings?”

Kakarrot hops to his feet and jogs up to the makeshift altar.  He digs into his pocket and produces two plastic rings.

“Seriously?” Vegeta demands.

Kakarrot makes a whiny face.

“Listen, you gave me fifteen minutes of warning.  You’re lucky I had enough arcade tickets to win these.”

“You’re thirty and playing in the arcade of a casino,” Bulma says.

He shrugs and gives that typical Kakarrot grin.

“I have an addictive personality and this is less dangerous than gambling, Chi-Chi says.  Whatever. Replace them later.”

Vegeta rolls his eyes, but takes the rings.  They exchange them and a staticky rendition of the music from “Bittersweet Symphony” plays overheard, which she finds to be a weird, but oddly fitting song.  She leans in to kiss him as the song plays on. Chi-Chi and Kakarrot burst into cheers.

They break apart and Bulma presses her forehead against his.  It’s weird and tacky and maybe, later, she’ll want a proper wedding with her parents and their kids and families in attendance (she just _knows_ that Caulifla is going to pitch a fit that she wasn’t included), but for now this is perfect.


End file.
